Education: Stanford Girls Think Outside the Box

A senior project doesn’t have to end with the end of the school year. Alicia Seta, Carolyn McEachern, and Sasha Spivak are three Product Design Engineers from Stanford University who set out to redefine the cardboard box. Over the course of their 6-month capstone course, they developed Boxly, a 100% recyclable fort-building kit for kids.

Boxly lets kids define their own creative space by giving them the confidence — and the cardboard — necessary to build big. It has the familiarity of a cardboard box without the constraining shape or size. Through user testing, iteration, and professional advising, Boxly has become a toy that fosters creativity and innovation in the way kids play. And although Boxly started out as a class project, when the team received such positive feedback, they decided to take it a step further.

Last week, these Stanford women launched Boxly on Kickstarter. They have received tremendous support and are now over 60% funded with 3 weeks to go. Boxly has been publicly shared by SparkTruck and GoldieBlox, organizations which empower kids through hands-on learning and engineering. The team has received a grant from the Stanford Arts Institute MashUp program, and they exhibited Boxly at Maker Faire in San Francisco. They have also partnered with Camp Kesem to give their Kickstarter backers the option to donate kits to Kesem camps.

Alicia, Carolyn, and Sasha are really excited to see what kids can do when they have ownership over their play. Kids can use cardboard and art supplies to build something they have complete creative control over, with Boxly to help them get started.